The Arkansaw traveler., 1887-10-08
Complied for The ArkGnSdW 7F0reteT. SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

During a trial in hot weather, car on Prussian railway was kept about sixteen degrees cooler than the air outside by receiving its ventilating current through an ice-t tank in the roof.
 The pruning of vines has been in- vestigated by H. Mueller, who finds that the proper time is while the fruit is ripening, and that the young shoots should be cut, as their develop ment requires much sugar.
 ANIMALS IN THE MooN's SHADE.- Interesting observations of the effects of the recent eclipse upon the lower animals have been collected in Berlin. Birds in the forests were suddenly silenced, and showed signs of disquiet when darkness set in. Herds of deer and the smaller tour-footed game ran about in alarm. Some birds confined in Berlin showed sudden sleepiness, and other great uneasiness and fright. Parrots were far more susceptible than canaries, and were totally silent until long after the eclipse.
 TRFE-RINGs.-The old supposition that each concentric ring marks a year in a trees growth has been proven to be erroneous by observa- tions during recent years. These re- suits were yielded by trees whose ages were positively known at the time of cutting Pig hickory ii years old showed 16 rings; green ash, 8 years, II rings; burr oak, 10 years, 24 rings; chestnut, years, rings; peach, 8 years, g rings; chestnut oak, 24 years, IS rings; Kentucky coffee tree, 10 years, IA rings.
 RAPID PHOToGRAPHY.-AG German photographer, Herr Ottoman An schutz, has succeeded in preparing photographic plates SO sensitive that an exposure of one ve-thousandth of a second is sufficient. A very small lens must be used, so that the pie lures are generally only seven-six- teenths of an inch in length and breadth. Enlarged to an inch and half on glass plates, and rotated in series of twenty-four before a Geissler tube, the pictures are used for reproducing the motions of ani- mals on large screen.
 CLIMATE OF INDIA Meteorological reports from the Punjab Province of British India give a mean rainfall of 29.1 inches for 1886, ranging from 53.3 inches at Abbotabad to 4.3 inches at Muzaffargarh, not including the extraordinary fal, of 127.5 inches at Dharmsala. The highest temperature in the suns rays was 1S3 degrees at Lahore on April 28, and it ranged from 172 to 175 degrees in the five succeeding months. The greatest maximum in the shade was l1S de- grees at two stations on April 13, and the absolute minimum in the shade was 59 degrees at Rawalpindi in February.
 AN UNDEvELoPED BoNANZA.-The chief plant products of West Africa having a present economic vulue are, according to a new hand book by Captain Alfred Moloney, palm oil, ground nuts, india ubber, coffee, gum, dye woods, cacas. cotton. flores, and timbers. Palm oil is obtained from a plant covering immense areas, and is imported to England to the value of nearly $5, ,00O, ,O0O yearly. Al new product is the "white African from Landolphia owa,fensis, in which the trade has risen during the last four years from almost noth- ing to nearly $1S0,0O0. Many plants yield valuable gums, and many have important medicinal properties. There is besides wonderful botanical wealth whose possible practical value is yet unknown.
 LEES FoRCEs.-Fifty years ago, said Sir Henry E. Roscoe in his late address as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the connection existing be- tween the laws of life, vegetable and animal, and the phenomena of inor- ganic chemistry was i'll understood. The idea that the functions of living beings are controlled by the same forces, chemical and physical, which regulate the changes in the inanimate world was one then held by only very few of the foremost thinkers of the time. The picture presented to the student of to-day is very differ ent one. We now believe that no such conflict is possible, but that life is goverened by chemical and physical forces, even though we cannot in every case explain it's phenomena in terms of these forces; that whether these tend to continue or to end existence depends upon their nature and and that disease and death are as much consequence of the operation of chemical and physical laws as are health and life.